Box Studio

a panel with parts on it, in a box. Pick the board and the material, put parts on the face, print the box, cut the plate.

Box, material, board

Parts on the face

Positions are measured from the centre of the face (across) and from the front edge up the slope. Turn is degrees. Sizes come from the library; width and height override the cutout when set. The box sizes itself from the board and the parts; extra width and depth stretch it past that, and the round-over softens the body's outside edges while the face stays flat. A part that would cut into the walls (or onto the frame's rim, in plate mode) turns red; move it in until it clears. Tolerances: cutout clearance is added per side to every hole (and to the DXF and SVG), so a printed PLA face wants about 0.25 mm and a laser- or waterjet-cut sheet wants about 0; the lip fit and the plate-in-pocket clearance are the other two. The ghosted blocks in the viewer are the parts' bodies behind the face.

The library is components.js: one entry per part with its cutout, body and mounting holes. Add a part there and it appears here. Every size is a datasheet approximation until you measure the real thing.

Numbers

Make it

The build sheet lists every part to make and buy, the settings, and the face layout, with the 1:1 template as its last page. Print the template at 100% (no fit-to-page) and measure the 50 mm bar; tape it to the sheet and centre-punch.

STL is always millimetres; the DXF and SVG carry the unit you chose. The top prints face-down. The DXF has layers OUTLINE, CUTS, HOLES and ENGRAVE for the waterjet, laser or router. Open any STL in PrusaSlicer and check for no auto-repair warning before printing. Brass heat-set inserts go in the four bosses under the top (and, in plate mode, four more from the face side); the holes carry a lead-in chamfer. Set them with a soldering iron at about 200 °C, straight, and let the plastic cool before loading them.

What goes inside

Why it exists

Built first for the Blotter, a small trading-desk controller (a screen, up, down, take, pass, talk), then opened up: it is really a tool for putting real parts on a real panel and getting a box you can print and a plate you can cut. Made at 100xbtr. Runs entirely in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Geometry by Manifold, viewer by three.js. Part sizes are datasheet approximations: measure before you cut.